


Be Strong, Saith My Heart (I am a Soldier)

by AceQueenKing



Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Genre: Alien/Human Relationships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence: Scorpina Defects during MMPR Season 2, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, First Kiss, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-12-26 23:31:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18292397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Scorpina defects from Lord Zedd's forces, and hides in plain sight among the humans. A simple plan, but a foolproof one.Until, of all the people in all the places in world, Trini Kwan suddenly walks right back into her life.





	Be Strong, Saith My Heart (I am a Soldier)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



Scorpina could forgive many things, but never cowardice.

She’d skirted Zedd's call to court, watching in disgust as he exiled Rita. Watching with an even further curl of her lip as Goldar prostrated himself. She had always known Zedd had intimidated him; she has never known that it would drive her friend to cravenness. His brothers on Titan would be ashamed.

When he had returned to her room seeking to brag about his promotion, golden wings spread wide, she sighed. “You have disgraced yourself,” she whispered and felt evil joy burst through her veins as he looked askance. He knew he had behaved dishonorably.

“What would you have me do?” He asked with quietness in his voice that was almost startling. “We cannot stand against him.  _Rita_  could not stand against him.”

“You did not need to sacrifice her.” He waved her concerns away with a gloved hand. Scorpina suspected, as they all did, that Rita had never quite recovered from 10,000 years of solitude; her knife blade had dulled. Still: it was growing sharper, would grow sharper still. Rita was recovering, and had Goldar and Rita banded together when Zedd returned, convinced him to grant them more resources…Scorpina had little doubt their squad would have eventually proven victorious.  But instead, they had squabbled like children.

Instead, Goldar had thrown their entire squad away for little more than a door prize. Zedd had little need of Finster, Squatt, or Baboo; even Goldar and herself would be reduced in value, seen as little better than a putty. “Had you teamed together, you could have explained Zordon had 10,000 years to gather resources and ask for an investment. Instead, you have a promotion to Zedd breathing down our necks and the rest of our squad fettered in chains.”

Rita had protected them all, in her own way. She was no stranger to corporal punishment and could in her own way be cruel – but she chose her people carefully and kept them from permanent harm when possible. She was a Vile first and foremost, and the M52 galaxy had long been used to breaking threats against their power by promoting and acquiring the best and brightest from all challengers to Master Vile's long-held seat.  Zedd, on the other hand, went through squads like paper. Rita was a knife; he was a sword. Both useful but in vastly different situations. Losing her was a grievous error and Zedd would pay for his lack of vision.

“With his power,”  Goldar sniveled. “We will have all the resources we need.”

“We'll see,” she said, already planning her escape.  Power was nothing without strategy. 

* * *

 

Zedd called on her exactly once.

Zedd's plan was clumsy, seduce a power ranger. She rolled her eyes, knowing it wouldn’t work, and knowing too she wouldn’t return to the moon base when it was done.

She fought, obeyed the orders to the letter, but when Goldar went up, she teleported sideways, skipping continents. Zedd wouldn’t go after her longer than a week or two.  That was assuming he noticed her missing at all, of course. He had called upon her only once. Oh, he'd punish her if he caught her, but he’d developed his laser focus on Zordon and he'd rationalize her as a loss that would be minor in terms of the world he could see conquering, the Earth so close he could hold it in his clawed fingertips. He would be wrong to dare to assume his victory as inevitable; without Rita the humans would easily take the planet back the second Zedd beheld a new bauble.

She’d seen enough of humans to know they had a fighting spirit.

And so she ran. Her plan was simple: pose as human, lay low. She took clothes off a laundry vine, stalked into the closest town she landed by, or at least the closest biggest enough to hide in:  _Wilkommen in Bern_ , it said. Big city, old city, but not older than her.

It had been a long time since she’d lived among humans.

She was familiar enough with human customs to pass as one of them; humanoid in appearance too, so long as Rita held no staff to change her. And now there was no Rita. She’d lived among the humans once, waiting; 10,000 years had passed in-between then and now in a deep sleep, but the humans were little less crude and it was easy to hide in plain sight among them.

Humanity had not changed that much, Scorpina thought. Still, the humans gathered in familiar units. Still, they hunted for food. Still, they fought and feuded with one another at a rate that no alien species could hope to emulate. They were a violent, dull species, barely able to go to the stars. Rita’s conquering of them, she thought, would have been a mercy.

But there was no more Rita. No more Zedd. Not even a Goldar to share her observations with.

She was alone, marooned by choice on a primitive planet. She wasn’t strong enough to dream to conquer herself — her only option was to wait. Sooner or later, Zedd would leave, and she could sneak back to the moon palace and from there, on to the galaxy at large. There would be more than a few employment opportunities for a warrior with her skill set, and there was an always a war somewhere to be fought. Scorpina was willing to travel.

But for now, she’d watch and wait. People looked mostly like they had in the old days, though there were a few changes:  the clothes were better, and they certainly smelled sweeter now that they were bathing themselves more than once every few rotations of the sun. It took Scorpina only a few days of living in the park before she’d picked up enough of this clumsy language to be able to communicate; a few days later, she’d gotten a  _job_ , doing menial labor in a restaurant that asked no questions and gave her plenty of time to try human food (not spicy enough, but edible enough to provide needed caloric intake), and soon, enough money to buy temporary lodging (small, but as someone who slept in a cocoon, Scorpina needed little space). 

She fell into a pattern with that; Zedd either didn’t care she was missing, or wasn’t very successful at looking for her, for she saw the putties nowhere but the news, watching the power rangers trounce Zedd time after time. There was pleasure in that, and for a while, she forgot her old life. Months passed. Scorpina tended the bar, cooked the food. She didn’t make friends, per se — it was hard to make friends with creatures no brighter than Squatt — but she was thought of well enough as a distant coworker. And it was life, life enough; in time, her cover name — Lamy Arikisigawa — feels almost as true to her as her own name.

At least, until one of the power brats came and walked right back into her life.

* * *

 

She wasn’t in her power suit, but Scorpina would know her anywhere. The cheery yellow clothes, the cool warrior’s eyes, the dim ebb of the power of the morphing grid running through her veins — the former yellow ranger, Trini Kwan, stared across the counter that Scorpina was tending. They both froze. Their look lasted half a second; Scorpina didn’t look away from her eyes, though it would have been smarter to give her less of a glimpse.

She watched Trini’s face as her eyes widened; surprised. She did not run — foolish. More than one ranger had met their match when left alone with Scorpina. Scorpina debated using magic, summoning her curved blade from the morphing grid, but didn’t; the sooner she used it, the more likely Zedd might have her location, especially if there was a power brat nearby.

Scorpina knew which he would consider the more important target.

Instead, she grabbed a human-forged knife from the counter, held it flat against her waist as she leaned forward. Few options open to her — if the girl made a fuss, she’d need to stab, quick. Then  _run_. Messing with the power brats meant messing with Zordon, which meant messing with Zedd, and while she did not fear either wizard from a distance, she certainly did not want to wind up in any proximity to either, again.

“Scorp-“ the yellow ranger said, and she looked up, and something in her expression must have given the young thing pause because she stopped her sentence there.

“What can I get you, miss?” She asked. Her voice was on edge, and sounded mean; it would be what the ranger was used to hearing, she supposed. The yellow ranger sat down at her counter, eyes open wide. 

“Uh…Is this a trick?” The young girl stared her down, and Scorpina shook her head.  _Don’t_.

She caught the eye of the owner in back, kindly if eternally old-fashioned Herr Spreiger, who was looking down on them with his eyebrows fully raised. He started tromping toward them with all the subtly of a walrus, and Scorpina took a deep breath. No way to explain it; she’d have to run if the girl ratted her out and hope Zedd didn’t trace the energy beam as she teleported blindly to the furthest land mass she could reach with her limited manipulation of the power grid.

“Young lady, is there a – a problem?” Spreiger said. He glared down at the yellow ranger, and Scorpina wanted to laugh: he was assuming the worst of the wrong person. Appearances, of course, were deceiving. “This…girl…makin’ you feel uncomfortable, Ms. Lamy?”

“None of that,” Scorpina said. “Just an old…friend.” The Ranger nodded once, simply, her eyes never leaving Scorpina’s. “A surprise visit.”

“Hm, well, friends do not eat for free, here in Switzerland, regardless of whatever they do at home,” he said, waving a finger in their face but — satisfied now that he was sure of her duties being done to the letter (and his money guaranteed), he left them to their conversation.

Or lack thereof.

“Thanks,” the yellow ranger said, then laughed a bit. Something shifted between them, but it was too human, too fast for Scorpina to catch it, let alone understand it. She knew only that she felt vulnerable, tight in her chest in a way she did not know how to explain. The yellow ranger’s eyes glanced down to the menu for a moment, then back to her. “Can I have…a cheese omelet, please?”

“Sure.” She turned away from the girl, but felt her eyes on her the whole time as she put in the order. It burned; itched unpleasantly, and Scorpina fought the urge to turn around and glare back at the girl. The feeling lasted even as she returned a few minutes later, a cheese omelet on a tray. She slid it in front of the power ranger.  The ranger nodded. There was no further conversation between them, but Trini Kwan ate the food Scorpina served, and left her a generous tip that made the former villain wonder about her: what was the yellow ranger about? Was the tip meant as a peace-offering? Some token of forgiveness? Or was it worse than that, coins and paper thrown down in pity for having seen a competent enemy slink so low?  She collected the money, dropped it in her pocket. She didn’t spend it that night, instead going home to brood in her cocoon.

Trini Kwan, the yellow ranger, occupied much of her mind. She should have moved on, should have taken the risk and teleported away, or at the very least, gotten a bus ticket to go a few cities over, where the thread of being recognized was lesser, she thought. Then, a moment later, she thought of Trini Kwan’s eyes, wide and heated with confusion, and realized: no, she would not be doing that. She was uncomfortable with the reaction that the yellow ranger brought out in her, but equally uncomfortable being left without answers as to what the girl was doing in her town, in her restaurant. Was Zordon marking her out as a potential threat? Was the yellow ranger equally alone here, stranded in a strange land like herself? She wanted to find out, even knowing the practical choice was to live with the mystery and go on.

 _Fool_ , she chided herself. She had been too hard on Goldar, if she was all too willing to indulge her own curiosities like this.

Still, despite knowing it was a mistake, Scorpina decided to stay, and the next morning, she returned to work, somehow knowing the yellow ranger would enter her life again. 

* * *

 

 The yellow one came back the next day. And the next, and the next. She would generally come at the very start of the day, as Scorpina was tying on her apron; after weeks of doing so, they fell into a rhythm of it. Scorpina tried to avoid serving her, but the girl somehow always came after that first day in the early morning, when there was no one else in yet besides her and the first-shift cook who spoke no German and even less English, and so she found herself taking the power brat her eggs, her coffee.

They fell into that routine; recognition, order, return of order, eaten, bill given, tip given, gone. Sometimes, the yellow ranger would try to draw her into conversation, and sometimes Scorpina let her, though if she could avoid it, she would. Just as on the battlefield, they inevitably ducked around one another, each teleporting off from their Formica battleground before their conversations dealt any permanent damage.

Scorpina did not like falling into this pattern. It was a risk to let the power brat know anything of her, and she knew the yellow one was monitoring her now and knew, too, that Trini Kwan’s eyes missed nothing. She could still feel the residuals of power within the little thing, knew she was still a powerful warrior.

“Thank you,” the yellow ranger said as Scorpina slammed down her eggs on the table with just a bit too much force, hoping to make the power brat jump. Scorpina nodded, brisk and militaristic. Old habits died hard.

 “Have you worked here long…?” Trini Kwan asked; it seemed she was in a chatty mood this morning. It was quiet in the restaurant so Scorpina could not pretend not to hear her. Trini Kwan gestured out a hand to the other side of the table, and Scorpina sat, icily.

“A couple of months,” Scorpina said, her voice a hissed whisper. “Your new teammates were too boring to bother to keep up with.”

Not the truth, but the girl shook her head. “It’s weird to me, too. Seeing them. Sometimes, I see  _her_  on the television and I think –  _that was me_. And now it isn’t.”

“Yes, well.”Scorpina rolled her eyes. Old Herr Spreiger came in the door, coughing a racket, and Scorpina stood. “Things change.”

“Yes, they do,” the girl said, looking at her oddly. Scorpina was not entirely sure how she felt about that look; it made her feel hot and cold at once, like standing outside on the moon veranda, watching the far-away stars of her homeland. She would likely never see that view again, she realized, and swallowed a lump in her throat.

“Is there a problem?” Herr Spreiger harrumphed. His walrus brows were raised, tusks visible – meant to look intimidating, but, truthfully, looked nothing more than pathetic.

“No,” Scorpina said, rolling her eyes. After Rita and Zedd, no mere human boss could ever be considered draconian.

She was not sure if it was an annoyance at her boss, or just her odd feeling toward the yellow ranger, but that day, when she served the power ranger her check, she added a comped cookie. She could not quite say why she did it, but later, in her cocoon home, Scorpina examined, exhaustively, the ways the power ranger’s eyes lit up in a smile.

Turning in her ancient home, Scorpina decided her gift was allowable. They were survivors of war, both of them; they’d gotten away from it, and it was not unheard of for warriors from opposite sides of the battlefield to salute one another once their conflict had ended. It would function as a bribe to keep the girl from reporting it back to Zordon, too, for she was sure the old wizard’s wrath would be just as bad as Zedd’s if he caught her. That’s what Rita had always told her, anyway.

Somehow, despite all attempts to convince herself that she was only doing what was wise, Scorpina still slept poorly, the ranger’s kind smile stuck behind her eyes whenever she closed them. 

* * *

 

The yellow one did not come the next morning, and Scorpina felt oddly disappointed, thrown off.

Her day continued as it had in her brief life before she’d gotten used to the presence of the power brat: her alter-ego Lamy served, and Scorpina slipped by unnoticed, hiding in plain sight.

She watched the TV out of the corner of her eye; the morning was slow, without the power brat to occupy her. Another monster attack on Angel Grove flew by as a blip on the news, an event so passé it wasn’t even worth interrupting the broadcast for anymore.

She watched Goldar flatten a building again, as he had so many times in Angel Grove. Watched the Megazord (a different one, she realized dimly; Zordon had truly used his 10,000 years well) flatten Goldar until he yielded, going back upstairs in failure.

He’d lost his wings again.

She was shocked to find she no longer cared. They had been friends for millenniums, soldiers serving together even longer. But staring at him now, all she felt was that he was a fool. Like Rita and Zedd, he just kept repeating the same plan and expressing surprise when it didn’t work. Madness. They were all mad.

She turned away from the news, went back to serving customers eggs and sausages and coffee and other human things. She wondered if maybe she caught in the same circle of repeat-failure-repeat, if in a different way.

* * *

 

The yellow brat was waiting for her when she got off her shift; she said nothing, falling into step with Scorpina like they were sisters in arms and not old enemies. Scorpina walked with her until they were out of earshot of the café. She turned down an alley, wondering if the brat would follow.

She did.

“Not smart, power brat,” she hissed. She turned; the girl had her hands raised.

“Please, I just want to talk. I don’t mean you any harm.”  Scorpina watched her for a wary moment. The power ranger didn’t move.

“You alone?” She figured the young woman wouldn’t lie. The so-called good guys had rules about things like that, lying and cheating; as if it all their rules didn’t just keep the status quo as it was. Even if she did attempt to lie, Scorpina thought she would know: the former yellow ranger’s face was an open book.  

“Yes.” Scorpina watched her coolly, and the girl rolled her neck, some unseen slight bothering her. Scorpina waited and watched as it forced its way up the girl’s throat. “Well, I have friends in town, but…no, they’re not here. They will come looking if you try to do anything to me, though.”

“Same here,” Scorpina hissed, though that was not true. No one would notice if she disappeared beyond her boss, and even him, only barely.

There was a hint of pity in the other woman’s eyes that suggested she knew that, but she nodded all the same at Scorpina’s lie. “Of course. I really don’t want to hurt you, you know.”

“What do you want to talk about?”  Best to get down to business. Well best to ignore the yellow ranger entirely, but there was no way she could do that, and felt annoyed that so easy a task seemed beyond her now.

“You left Zedd and Rita’s service,” the girl said, and gestured out to towards the cafe. “For that. Why?”

“My loyalty was to Rita. Zedd is a fool. Without her, there was no chance of taking you brats out. And Zedd is…temperamental. I had no desire to suffer his ire for his own plans failing.” Scorpina shrugged. “Politics.”

She expected the girl to be disappointed; she probably expected a tearful confession that Scorpina was all too aware of the evil she’d caused in her long, long life and expected Scorpina to confess how she’d felt pangs of a conscious burning her until she could take it no more.  Good was always self-righteous like that. As if good people had never killed, as if evil people had never loved. But to her surprise, the girl just shook her head.

“I see.”  She tilted her head toward Scorpina. “Rita is back, though. She and Zedd are married now, Kim tells me.” After a second, she seemed to realize that Scorpina might have not known who that was and awkwardly scratched her neck. “Kim’s the uh….”

“ _Pinky_. I’m aware,” Scorpina snapped, confusion whipping through her. Rita had returned? She wouldn’t doubt the witch had clawed her way back on top, doubted even less she’d marry Zedd if it meant gaining his power—Rita was a knife, a commando used to running divide and conquer missions—but she’d heard no calling from the woman at all.

And Rita—unlike Zedd, Rita  _knew_  her. Could call her, if she wanted. Had called her to serve, in the past.

But her friend, her friend for whose memory she had defected from the only unit she had ever known, had not called her at all.

Had treated her as dead. Disposable. Discarded.

“I – I’m sorry.” Trini Kwan held a hand out to her, adding a cherry to the top of the farce. “I didn’t mean to upset you, just thought you should—"

“Not upset.” She hissed, though she was. Bad guys were allowed to lie, after all. “They are _nothing_ to me now. You see, I have no allegiance to them now and this should prove it. Is that all?”

“No, I want to know…” Trini crossed the few steps between them and leaned toward her. “How do you do it? Just drop the whole…warrior thing? Be happy just being a person in the world again?”

She took a step closer to Trini Kwan, let one hand lay just a bit too tightly on her face. Saw the fear in the girl's eyes, and felt powerful for the first time in months. “Please tell me,” the girl said. “I try, I try to forget, but then I remember and it’s just…” She visibly took a step back.

Scorpina took one more step toward her.

“You don’t, she whispered, her lips so close to the girl’s mouth that she could kiss her. “That’s the truth of it. It’ll never leave you.”

“Oh.” The girl's eyes were staring at her lips, visible hunger on her face; Scorpina snarled and pulled away, stomping through the alleyway as if every footfall was a chain in a fence she was building between her and the yellow ranger.

She did not see Trini Kwan for several weeks after that. 

* * *

 

Eventually, she started looking for the yellow ranger herself.

It was not because she missed the goody-two-shoes presence, no. Certainly not. It was just that she was the …enemy. And it was smart to keep appraised of the enemy, that was all. That. Was. All.

She spent a few dollars buying time at an internet café, suffering a connection that was almost an insult to pay for. She missed quantum communication.

The humans closest analogue—which wasn’t close at all, this internet thing brought new meaning to the human phrase _roughing it_ —revealed precious little information on Trini Kwan. She read every article there was about the girl anyway:  International Peace Conference leader; noted 30 under 30 social activist; Kung Fu black belt and gym owner— that one was the only thing that sparked Scorpina's interest.

She took note of the gym’s location in the photo, started to go there. After work, and then when that failed, before work, too.

It was the third morning she went that she saw Trini Kwan there.

“Fight me,” she growled. The girl looked at her, startled for a second, and then smiled.

“I thought you might come here someday,” she said, and giggled. Scorpina didn’t get it, and held out her arm.

“Come,” Scorpina hissed. “It’s been too long since I had a fight.”

Trini smiled in a calm way as Scorpina beckoned, her whole body itching for a battle.

“Just a spar?” She took a defensive position, moving her arms up into a block. Scorpina didn’t bother to confirm, instead coming at the girl with two strikes, fast.

She blocked calmly, capably, as Scorpina remembered she would. The muscle memory of a warrior didn’t forget. Scorpina didn’t retreat and gave no quarter; she scored a hit that would have eviscerated the girl if she’d still had her golden armor, though that she was too afraid to summon it from the grid. Trini stumbled back and Scorpina grinned.

This, she understood, with the girl. Fists, legs, movement. Simple; honorable; right.

“Good hit!” the power ranger said, annoyingly cheering on Scorpina’s own victory.

“Got plenty more,” she ground out, waving her hand as she shifted into a defensive stance. The power ranger came at her, one fist, than two. Parried easily; Scorpina moved to strike her in her midsection and the girl moved fast, grabbing her leg and throwing her forward.

Scorpina, laying flat on her back, did something she had not done for months. Perhaps years.

She laughed. Pure, genuine laughter. It bubbled out of her in a surprising fashion, melting something inside her she had not quite realized had been stuck frozen for so long.

The yellow one laughed, too. “You’re not bad, you know.”

“Soldiers who are bad at fighting do not live long,” Scorpina said, her smile fading as she remembered all the people who had been lost in the war between Zordon and Rita all those years ago. It had been a bloody war, then; Trini Kwan had been fortunate that Zordon had been better prepared in this fight.

And even more fortunate she’d gotten out of it as she did. Zordon used his soldiers just as hard as Rita did, in the end.

Scorpina got up in a move that was not, strictly, necessary — she flipped up on her legs, moving into a full flip, and aimed for a high kick. Trini blocked, but late, and she fell down onto the mat, losing her balance.

Scorpina rolled on top of her, holding down her wrists as she above her, triumphant.

“Mark my victory,” she whispered.

“Noted,” the yellow one said, breathing heavy.

For a moment, neither said anything. Then, she leaned down and pressed a kiss to Trini Kwan’s lips; it was automatic. A sign of respect from one warrior to another, she told herself, except certainly she had never kissed another warrior during a sparring match like this before.

But then, she had been very lonely for competition for some time.  She hadn’t realized how much of her life she had been missing; how much of her warrior’s senses she had let lay dormant, and now it all came to her, in a dizzying emotional blast. Trini leaned into the kiss; moaned into her mouth like a lover, her hands tangled in her hair—Scorpina stopped. A rush of endorphins ran through her heart like a freight train; she pulled away from the girl on instinct with wide eyes.

“I liked that, “ Trini said, licking her lips, panting a bit. Endorphins, she understood. Strange how their reactions ran the same across species. “You didn’t need to stop.”

“Closeness does not come easily to me. You understand,” Scorpina said, coldly, shoving herself away; she needed space, space. “Being a warrior yourself.”

“No,” Trini closed her eyes. “I get it. I’m…like that too. I used to have this great group of friends, but they’ve moved on. I close my eyes and I see — putties. Rita. Zedd. Goldar. You, sometimes — not anymore, though. I mean they’re still working on saving the world in their own ways, don’t get me wrong; Zack’s got his charity, and Jason’s back in Angel Grove, tryin’ to help Tommy and Billy and Kim save the world but they don’t really talk to me about that stuff, not anymore. I’m not important like that, now. But the warrior I was is still here, locked inside. And all I have is this studio. And I think…there are these aliens out there, who are stopping at nothing to try to take over my world, and here I am, knowing that and not doing enough to stop them. I am teaching some defense skills to people here but…” Trini sighed. “It’s not enough.”

Scorpina walked away a moment, thought of the people she had once considered her friends. “At least you have that,” she said. Quietly. “Most who have fought in the war between Rita and Zordon walked away with less.”

How many worlds had she left devastated, once? She thought of the original yellow ranger, the scared boy from some primitive tribe Zordon had gotten to do his bidding; he had been a worse threat then, uncontained in Rita’s time-space vortex just yet. Boi, she thought; that was his name. She remembered from the scream of the pink one then as she’d fought him, had destroyed him. She had removed the coin from his belt personally and presented it to Rita, who had cackled and called her indispensable. How she’d basked, preened. Like a fool.

And then Rita had gone and lost it in a coin toss anyway. Tch. She had spent so much of her life fighting Rita's battles and Rita had left her feeling nothing so much as a worm under her foot. Disgraceful. She had served Rita and thought she had done so with honor. Now she wondered if Rita was simply a more manipulative mirror of Zedd and Zordon.

“Including you?” Trini asked. She didn’t turn to look at the girl, but knew her expression from her voice: soft, sympathetic. Good people were always like that.  Always willing to turn the other cheek. Always willing to pretend that there was some reason people did bad things, some magical way of absorbing responsibility so it really wasn’t their fault.

But that, to Scorpina, had never seemed honorable. And grudgingly, she did respect the ranger enough to be honest with her.

“No.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I fought for Rita because I wanted to. I spent years learning how to kill, how to survive a war. I cultivated that set of skills, and I am very good at using them.”

Trini said nothing for a moment. Probably struggling to come to grips with the realization that not everyone had a tragic back-story. Good people always did.

“I get it.” Trini said, her voice full of none of the sadness Scorpina would expect. “Same for all of us, right? You’re thrust into those circumstances and you learn how to react.”

“I was not a confused child,” Scorpina spit. “Do not try to absolve me of a guilty conscience, for I assure you there is none.”

“Didn’t say you had one. Just that…I don’t hold any grudges. For what happened between us in Angel Grove.”

“Nor do I," Scorpina admitted quietly.

“Would you…like to teach here?” Trini walked behind her and wrapped a hand on her shoulder. “I could use another instructor. You are very skilled and…I do enjoy your company. I would like to see more of you.”

Scorpina thought for a long moment. The humans were foolish things, beyond foolish. They were weak. And yet — they had withstood Rita. They had withstood Zedd. For all their fighting, they withstood 10,000 years of her sleep and progressed to a level far beyond their barbarism.

And…she could not deny, Trini Kwan was an honorable warrior. And, perhaps, something more to her. 

“Yes,” she said. Trini smiled and pressed a kiss to her cheek, and Scorpina felt an unfamiliar tingling to it.

She handed in her apron the next day. 

* * *

 

The humans were odd things.

Scorpina fell into a new pattern with Trini Kwan; each day, the two started their day together, eating under the same roof and snuggling in the same bed. (Scorpina could never quite shake the thought that human beds were odd, but she was willing to put up with it out of the grudging realization that building a second cocoon for Trini would be difficult.) They went to work together, where Scorpina led the adult classes, turning the humans into the beginnings of a warrior tribe.

Trini taught the children and occasionally captured her eye, smiling; Trini said she did not have the temperament to teach children, which Scorpina had to admit was true.

Their work was a simple thing: kicks, punches; simple katas, movements that started still and moved into frenzies of actions. She had not thought humans so capable of retaining the movements, but to her surprise, they frequently matched her demonstrations, even if they did not have the power of the morphing grid to call upon.

Except for one who did.

None matched her more than Trini Kwan. She was well aware that they drew onlookers for their demonstrations; somehow, it was easy to keep on the instinctual beat with Trini. One, two, turn, hit, block, turn, kick, fall back, grab, release, bow.  The movements felt right in a way that serving never had; even her service with Goldar and Rita had not felt this right, not in a long time.

It was…strangely honorable. Much like the woman.

Time passed. Scorpina stopped wondering when her ride out of this primitive planet would show up. When Trini showed her a news article about their gym on a local website in their home, she felt that the three minutes it to render their faces seemed almost reasonable, rather than ridiculous. The picture they had taken — Scorpina standing tall, arm around her girlfriend, while Trini had her head leaning on her neck — felt right. She printed it out, framed it. Printed it again when the badly-manufactured earth-inks dried, and smiled as she passed it every morning, serving herself earth-made corn-flakes and earth-cow juice.

She was adjusting to life on this planet, and she knew it.

But it didn’t feel so bad.  Sure, she was stuck on a low-tech rock, constantly under the fear of Rita and Zedd finding her out, and sure, one of these days they were going to have to deal with telling the rest of the Power Rangers about their relationship but — for the first time, in a very long time, Scorpina felt like those problems just…seemed small, for she had a powerful warrior at her side who held just as much loyalty to her as Scorpina did to the woman.

They could handle anything anyone could throw their way.

And they would.

Together.


End file.
